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I wish my dad was at my graduation today. I miss him. Oh God, how I needed him. It’s seriously all I’ve ever wanted since he wasn’t able to attend my 6th grade or high school graduation. It’s what I looked forward to the most about him getting out of jail after 10 years. I’d be lying if I said he was not the reason I took so long to complete my college education. Heck, I was so freaking glad my graduation wouldn’t happen until he was out. I wanted to wait for him. I wanted him to be there. I needed him. But instead of him filling up that seat next to my mom and brothers, all I had of him was an apology text and one missed call from him. The first I received in the bathroom, when I was checking up on my makeup and hair, making sure my cap wouldn’t fall off with a tip of my head.

“Ola mi amor perdón por llamarte antes que pases una muy bonita graduación te juró qué me duele no estar con tigo en tu graduación”‘Hello my love, I am sorry for calling you before you have a beautiful graduation. I swear it hurts that I can’t be there with you at your graduation.’

Instantly I felt my eyes well up with tears, a knot in my throat. My friend comes out of the stall and I push it all back, focusing instead on the ceremony and the fact that my family wasn’t there yet. Seriously, again? We rush back to our art friends just as the line starts pushing out the door. My father is pushed out of my mind as the graduation goes on. I’m too busy trying to keep up with my friend’s jokes and our Dean’s sass.
Towards the end of the graduation I remember I have not wished my father a happy father’s day, despite Every. Damn. Speaker. Mentioning their father and wishing them a happy father’a day. I send him greetings and think nothing of it as I stand to move my tassel from the right to the left side of the cap as a symbol of our passing into graduate-hood. We walk out. All along the sides there are people crowding around to take pictures of the graduates. Again, I do not see my mother’s face. I shake off my disappointment and make plans to meet up with my friends at the art building after I dash away to find my family. Again, I do not find them. I look down at my phone to call them only to see I’ve missed a call from my dad. I rush to call back but, what would I say? The emotion now hits harder than before and I click ‘end.’ The knot is tighter, the tears fill my vision and I know I cannot show everyone this side. Today was supposed to be emotional for other reasons, not for the pain that’s been granted me since I was 12.
Instead I have father’s day making a mockery of me as again I have to spend another year without my dad. Only this time, it was something bigger. It was that much more important. And now I’m just left to wonder, how much more will he miss out on? How much more will I miss out on? That ticket that went to my aunt, the one that always goes to my aunt, should have been his. I don’t know what to do. It’s 3am and all I’m doing is crying the stupid makeup off. I hate this, I really do. No matter what I do or what happens, this will never change. I will never have my dad as I want him. He is still only pictures and short phone calls and once a year visits. He’s out of prison but we aren’t out of the system. Happy Father’s Day indeed.

Childhood… It’s pretty difficult taking a photo of my childhood, seeing as it’s several years and over a thousand miles away. So, this will be more of a ‘throwback’ of sorts.

I had just gotten through with Daily routine! Actually, I thought I might have accidentally mixed up themes for the day. Glad to see it’s not so, but I did so prefer it when it only had to be through photos..

No two days are ever the same with me. I am a college student, and am involved in different things, especially as of late. I also have my personal internet life (and non-internet life, of course) where i keep blogs and whatnot. Like this one! So it’s hard to put everything down. Maybe I’ll do a summary of MW, TR, F, and/or the weekend.

Mondays I wake up early–or rather, my mom wakes me up–and I rush to get my things together to get out of the house by 5:20am tops. If it’s a more relaxed day, I’ll be out of there by 7am. I’ll get rushed last-minute to the train station, buy my ticket, and I’m off! Time for another sleepy morning adventure back to school. Perfect napping time~ Once I get to my apartment, I usually doze off for a while and get up for my women’s studies class. That usually goes really well. After, it’s just time to catch up with my shows. Which reminds me, I haven’t gotten to the last two episodes of Game of Thrones yet. Bah! Tuesdays I wake up a lot earlier, rush off at the last minute to class and do the whole ‘school’ thing until around 4pm. Then, it’s back to my apartment and tumblr/youtube/wordpress/facebook. Wednesday and Thursday go pretty much as the last two days, minus the train ride. Then there’s the added art club meetings/workshops on Thursday nights. Friday goes the same as Monday, but headed back to L.A. Sometimes I meet really cool individuals, like I did this past Friday. It’s one of my favorite parts of having had to take the train since freshman year of college, back in ’09.

The weekends go a lot different to what happens in-week. I’m a part of this way of life within the Catholic church called the Neo Catechumenal way. It really consumes all of my life outside of whatever I do at school. I love it, though. I don’t think of it as taking up my time, or anything quite like that. I love it. We have Eucharist (or, service) on Saturday nights that go almost exactly like what we do at a regular Sunday masses, with a few exceptions. I’m not going to go into any specifics, though. These past two Sundays we have been evangelizing. We march down the streets of L.A. from our church and to the square, where we have a catechesis. We invite people both at the church and in the streets to follow us, to follow God, as the disciples followed Jesus. Throughout the entire time, we are singing and playing our guitars, clapping our hands, banging our drums. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. Throughout the weekend there are, of course, interactions with my family, good and bad. I love that we all have a great love for God and the Way. It just makes all parts of our lives connect in a way that just wasn’t possible before.

There you go, this is how my week pretty much goes. There’s always changes, of course; little things here and there. Hope I didn’t bore you with this one haha. Night all!

You know what’s tough? Taking a picture of your sky before class, only to come out to a completely different day! That’s exactly what’s been happening today. All this week, actually! I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the weather in Southern California, but I’m not entirely sure I don’t like it. It’s almost like playing a guessing game! haha which makes it all the more awesome sometimes. One thing for sure is that, if the day starts off hot or is hot at any point, you know it doesn’t stay the same for too long! I guess it’d be better to be able to wear shorts and a tshirt than carrying around a jacket all the time, though. Here’s my view from the top of one of our buildings!

Pet Peeves

I don’t feel like I have too many pet peeves. There are times that frustrations do build up, though, and I’m left with being annoyed at small things. Totally unfair, I know. But hey, I’m sure it’s happened to most people at least once, no? Have you ever had those moments when you’re asking someone to do something and all they do is stare blankly and disinterestedly at you? Yeah, I get that. A lot. It happens almost every other weekend that I go home, mainly from my youngest brother. He’ll just sit there and… nothing. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on through his head at the point, but it’s just so bothersome and why can’t he just do what is being asked of him? There’s another thing that my family tends to do that annoys me. Have any of you ever had those moments where you’re starting to talk about something that you feel needs to be said, especially when the people around you don’t seem to understand or are against and they tell you to ‘relax’ or ‘don’t get mad/ in a bitchy mood’? It’s like they completely squash what you were saying and make only their point important. Not only that, but by saying ‘relax’ or ‘don’t get mad/in a bitchy mood,’ the natural response is to disagree, which only makes the person say it more and causes you to get angry.

Smaller pet peeves would be things like leaving a mess in communal areas, when someone thinks its okay to interrupt my shows for whatever reason, when people think it’s okay to tell me what to do, what I should and should not be wearing, who I should or should not be talking to, what I can and cannot eat, that I should be more “ladylike” and not act the way I naturally do. Really, any time when someone tries to rule over my own decisions. Then there are issues that get me upset. I can’t call them pet peeves because it would be dismissing the issues and calling them annoyances and therefore not worthy of the attention they deserve. I have a problem with people who think they can point out any one and say they’re a) too fat, b) dressing like a ‘slut’, c) wearing clothes ‘not meant for their body type,’ and people that try and assume anything out of someone else’s life based on the way they look or act or do, or because they just so happen to be walking around at night. Then there are times when people talk religion with me. I don’t mind talking about religion, but these people are usually of another faith and are more interested in getting their own point across without respecting my own beliefs. That’s really all I ask for–that they be respectful and remember that our beliefs, while somewhat similar, are still different and no matter what, there’s no way you’ll ever change them.

There are others, of course. I just don’t feel like thinking about them, because my day is going well so far and I don’t want to dwell on negative things. Hope this wasn’t that bad a read for all of you. I’m not looking for some agreements on what I wrote because then it’ll seem more like I’m gearing up for battle against people who do what I’ve described.

I don’t exactly have a letterbox. I figured I could just take a picture of a letter in an actual box/basket I have. It could have been cute, maybe funny. But I’ll go with the reality and post what has been a ‘letter/mailbox’ for me for the past 7 or so years, since I moved from Texas. Here you go. Unfortunately we don’t have any of them fancy/homey letterboxes that most people have. Also, as I’m still a college student, I tend to change these quite often. I admit I have not learned my address here at my current school apartment. I just ship everything to my mom’s place. At least she stays put for more than a year!

Also, we juuust got this at school. I may or may not be using it in the future haha. I thought it was a scam the first time I read about it! Have you seen anything like it?

Best Childhood Memory..

I can’t exactly say I have a ‘best’ or ‘favorite’ childhood memory. I really feel like I had a good childhood overall, filled with lots of memories of my cousins and I making up stories and acting them out, or singing mariachi songs with my father, or visiting the bookstore with my mom. They all come in snippets, too, so it’s hard to think of any one concrete memory as sometimes they end up jumbling together into one.

When in Texas, I lived in one place nearly my whole life. It was this half-acre plot in what had been an orange-grove in South Texas. You could see the evidence in the many orange, grapefruit, and lime trees throughout the neighborhood and in our yard. Our little home was raised off the ground by bricks evenly spaced under the house, leaving stray cats, dogs, chickens, and sometimes snakes to sneak their way in under the house and make a home for their litters. There was a row of trees lined up along the front of our yard. I’m guessing this was primarily to mark our land, before fences and gates started getting popular. How magnificent those days must have been! So much easier to call on your neighbors and not having to cage yourself and your family and possessions in. In the “back”yard there was also these two giant trees that we would climb. There was always a picnic table under one of them. Behind those was a rather large shed. Almost the size of a small house, really. Actually, it was bigger than the one bedroom house that my aunt resided in when she lived behind my grandmother’s house. A house I, too, had lived in before my parents got our house.

In another half-acre lot over to our left lived my cousins Marty and Lupita, and their parents. Oh, the mischief we’d get into. It wasn’t anything necessarily bad. We just liked having fun, sometimes in a not-so-nice way; some of these included pushing each other off the bed, throwing/kicking footballs and soccer balls at each other, playing wrestling and boxing with each other. Oh wait, that was all me to Marty. haha Hey! He’s older than me by two years, AND pushed my brother and me around when we were younger. I can have some fun with him. 😛 Did I mention he was head over heels in love with Britney Spears and claimed he would someday marry her? hahaha Marty has a younger sister named Lupita (after the Virgen de Guadalupe); she’s about 5, 6 years younger than him. I absolutely loved being with her. We’re both writers and storytellers. I do strongly believe that this started from when we were younger and would create stories together. Remember those trees at the front of my yard? Well, after a while, they would slant over each other and create a sort of canopy. As we were small enough, we’d crawl under the space and sit around on some small logs we had placed in a circle. We’d pretend to have tea parties there, or pretend we were sitting around a great big campfire! There, we made up plenty of stories by either talking about our ideas or by playing pretend. Those were seriously some of the most memorable times of my life. I remember this one time that Marty, Lupita, Juan (the eldest of my brothers, younger than me by three years), and I had a nighttime picnic under Marty and Lupita’s porch. We were still pretty young; Marty must not have been older than 12. Our parents had packed us crackers, cheese, and other small snack-foods along with a blue and white checkered picnic blanket. We had all this laid out and were in the process of eating when out of the blue, one of the three jumped up and screamed. Our parents came out, and it turned out there had been a scorpion just behind us the whole time. That interruption sure made its mark in my memory.

There are just so so many other memories I can write about, both good and bad, but I think I’ll stop there for tonight. I realize that this post comes a day late, and that I should be posting the 5th challenge day. I had thought about not posting Sunday’s challenge, as I’d been busy the entire day and didn’t get to write anything. Still, I figured I may as well write it up now and actually complete the challenge in full. It’s still my goal! I hope you enjoyed this read. Do you have any stories to tell? Share them with us! If you liked this and would like to see more, you can ‘like’ this or follow me. I’ll be posting at least once a day! If you decide to follow the challenge yourself, be sure to tell me! I’d love to read what you have. 🙂

This little boy has made me very happy this past weekend, as has the rest of my family. I absolutely adore him, even if he has caused me to be up for more hours in the day that I’m used to; even if I am now suffering from very very sore legs and lower back pain from jumping around and doing squats while carrying him just to hear that tinkle of laughter. I am forever thankful for this weekend and for having the family that I have.

I write this post from my cousin’s home in northern California. We’re here for my cousin’s baby’s baptism and first birthday party. I remember the last time we were here, almost one exact year ago. It was shortly after having her first child. A lot of things are similar from then, it just took a stain on the tabletop to remind me of that. I mentioned on the first challenge post that I’m originally from Texas. The same goes for my cousin. She’s been living in northern California for a few years now after getting married to her truly awesome and wonderful husband (whom she met online–see, it can work!). As such, she doesn’t get to see her family (immediate and extended) for months at a time. That is why, on occasions such as this, we don’t think twice about coming over and visiting her little family. I remember last year my godparents (her parents) came over along with my cousin’s sister, her husband, and their two children. It was truly an amazing time. We hadn’t seen my godparents and my other cousin’s family since Christmas. Maybe it doesn’t seem so much to some of you, but I grew up in an environment where we knew we’d see at least half of my aunts, uncles, and cousins if not each day, then at least every other day. I grew up incredibly close to all my family. That’s something I’ll forever be thankful for. I know that not everyone is as fortunate, and not everyone sees family as such an important aspect of life–both extended and immediate. It’s kind of sad, really. In this particular weekend last year, we got to almost repeat what our life had been like in Texas. Everyone was together, we’d trade off children and chat about family issues, we had our big official family meals both at home and whenever we went out. There was an evening where there was a soccer game everyone sat for (futbol/football for the rest of the world). The husbands of each sister were rooting for an opposing team. They had bought the three munchkins jerseys (or onesies for the baby) for their respective teams and teaching them to say ‘Touchdown!.’ It was seriously one of the cutest things I had ever seen. That day we had bought about…7 boxes of pizza or so. They were greasy on the bottom and hot. It wasn’t until maybe an hour or so after they’d been sitting there that one of us remembered that the pizza boxes should not be on the bare table. We picked them up and saw we were too late; the grease and heat had made its mark on the table. Permanently. So when I saw the lighter brown splotches of stained wood on the dark espresso finish, I remembered that weekend. I remembered how close we all were. I remembered what it was like to have family so near that even one wrong move could accidentally make someone ticked off. Okay, that not aaaas much as if we were in Texas surrounded by everyone, but it happens every now and then. It could also partly be that I’m living away from my immediate family for school that I felt this was a lot closer to what family is supposed to be like and that what we were experiencing with mom and my brothers was only the half of it. This, would be the thing that I adore. The thing that makes me happy. It’s my family. It’s in knowing that you’ll always have someone there for you. It’s in fighting over the small things. It’s in leaving our marks on things the way students write ‘Jackson wuz here’ with an arrow pointing down to a date and locking it down to the location, as if it wasn’t obvious enough that the marked place was where they’d been. It’s in knowing that you’ll never ever want for a different family, no matter what goes on in it. It’s in loving unconditionally. I love you, familia. Thank you so very much for having us. You give me immeasurable joy and happiness and love. Just thought I should let you know. ❤ 🙂